Category Archives: outdoor fun

I may have sucked, but I competed in my first ever marathon! This marathon, where you can run either a 5K or walk 1M, raises money to support the Brunswick, OH area food bank. I was planning to do the mile walk with my husband and kids, but my kids talked me in to attempting the 5K. Poor choice….

Justice League of America

Costumes aren’t required, but any excuse to dress up is a good time in my mind. Our family theme this year was Justice League. We pulled my brother in to be our Superman too!

My brother, the former Marine, ran the 5K in 23 minutes. Not bad for someone that hasn’t done any running since last November when he separated!

Third fastest in his age range

My husband walked the mile, joined by our son when he gave up on the 5K. Our daughter finished around 35 minutes. There is a reason she wanted to be the Flash! My sad excuse for a Wonder Woman self completed it in 55 minutes. I feel I would have done better if I had started out walking to warm up. Shin splints are real and they suck!

Best Female Costume

I did win for having the best female costume. I will never be the fastest, but I can certainly own the best costume category!

Really looking forward to next year. I will actually prepare for the 5K, you know, practice running, stretch. Smart stuff!

Have you ever run a marathon? Are you one of those people that live for the runner high?

So how many of you were able to view any part of the eclipse a few days ago? I learned about it a few weeks ago, and decided this was something I wanted the kids to experience. Luckily, totality was visible a few short hours from where my parents live in North Carolina. It was a little funny because my kids started school on Wednesday, went Thursday, then I pulled them out Friday through Tuesday for this trip. Their teachers were all for it, it is kind of like a science field trip after all!

This was the best picture I was able to get with my phone

It’s been 26 years since I was able to experience an eclipse, and it has been weird for me this time around listening to everyone freaking out. Schools in our area of Ohio were basically having a lock down, keeping all the kids inside during the entire event. When I was in school, we made eclipse viewers to watch the event with. Glasses were readily available, but people were against using them for fear of eye damage, a valid argument, yes, but a little research could’ve allowed anyone to watch this event.

We watched the eclipse from Lee State Park near Bishopville, SC. The rangers there had information about the eclipse available, crafts to entertain kids leading up to totality, and it was at a park, so it was a nice place to relax and enjoy during the event.

Allowing you to see the progress without staring at the sun

My kids especially enjoyed this eclipse viewer the rangers had, as it made seeing the progress very easy. No constant on and off with your glasses.

Almost at totality

Given our location, we had a short window of the sun being completely dark, and the experience was amazing. Night bugs started calling, nature seemed to hold it’s breath in confusion for a few moments, then the sun came back out and normality resumed.

Everything went dark

Arthur was amazed! Chiara was less than thrilled, but enjoyed being outside for the whole time, and the crafts.

I know we’re all looking forward to the next one in seven years. Luckily no travel will be involved as we already live in the path of totality!

Fire!!
I married a former volunteer fireman, so I have a healthy respect for fire and it’s safety requirements. That being said, there is something so fun about watching a cotton ball burn!
I am slowly falling into the world of prepping. I know that word has many different meanings to people. It could be the “lunatic” survivalist living off the grid in the Rockies or it could be the lady down the street who has a month’s worth of food stored in the basement. I think I’ll wind up somewhere in between when all is said and done.
I’ve been piecing together 72 hour bags (I will blog about them when they’re done), and Tony and I’s bags will include fire starter kits (Again, more to come on that).
While looking into the fire kits, I found this very detailed website with instructions on how to make a very practical fire starter. The original blogger made 600 of them, I started smaller as I’m seeing how it all works.
To start, you need:
•ziploc baggie
•cotton balls
•Vaseline (I did use the Walmart brand because the main active ingredient was the same and it’s much cheaper)

Put a handful of cotton balls in the bag, add enough Vaseline to coat the cotton balls, then just start mushing it all up.
This was a strangely gratifying process because it feels really weird in the bag and you don’t get all slimy.

After letting them set for a few hours, until Tony got home, we of course had to try them out.

All you have to do is take the cotton ball and tear it open, yes it will be slimy, but in a survival scenario, you’re just trying to stay warm.

This little experiment also gave us the benefit or trying out my firestarter that I bought in the camping section of Walmart. A match or lighter will work as well.

Now part of you may be wondering why you don’t just use your match or lighter to light your kindling, and I have the answer. After watching this cotton ball burn for over 3 minutes, I realized how easy it would be to lay kindling over it until it lit. A match will not stay lit in strong winds and you don’t want to use all of your lighter fluid trying to start a fire.

These cotton balls, in a protective coat of the Vaseline, will continue burning in high winds. The original blogger also said that they will be waterproof once the Vaseline has set.

All in all, this is a fun little prepping, or even just a camping, supply to have in your arsenal.

This is another pointless, and yet freakishly satisfying, part of Geocaching. As I said before, there are a lot of types of caches, in a lot of different places. On your main profile page on geocaching.com there is a link to your “Souvenirs”. That is where you will find all of your badges.

These souvenirs, or badges, are earned for several different things. First, and easiest I think, is to get state souvenirs. All you have to do is get a cache in a state and you get that souvenir. So far I’ve grabbed OH, NJ, SC, IN AND WV. Tony and I are trying to grab at least one cache in each state we pass through.

There is an International Geocaching Day badge above. Also an easy souvenir to get, but only available once a year! August 15th is International Geocaching Day and the only requirement to this souvenir is that you find and log any type of cache on August 15th. Easy peasy!

The rest of my souvenirs were from the “Road Trip 2015”. This was a list of badges that they made available, during specific dates. For instance, they wanted you to get an Earth Cache, you needed to get a D5 or T5, hardest to find and/or get to, attend a geo-event, find a cache with ten or more favorite points and find a mystery/puzzle cache. There was a very reasonable amount of time to find these caches, so don’t think you would need a week to get it all done at once.

The added bonus to doing the “Road Trip” is that once you complete the caches they required, you get the Road Trip souvenir. I was a little over excited about getting this souvenir!

Yes, they are just little digital stickers on your page. If you feel like spending the money, you can purchase the actual pins from the geocaching store, but it is strangely satisfying seeing the souvenirs that you’ve gotten. Try it and see!

Another fun thing about geocaching is the variety of caches available to you. There are many types that I have no experience with, so obviously I’ll only be writing about the ones that I am familiar with. For a full list, be sure to check out the full cache type list at the official geocaching site.

The first, and most common type of cache is the traditional cache. This is also most basic and simple one. You select the cache on your app, it gives you the coordinates, you go where it tells you and you find the cache, sign the log and move on. Quick and easy smiley! There are different levels of difficulty and different terrain types within this category, but there is no figuring anything out with these, just point and go.

The next type of cache that I’ve completed is the mystery, or puzzle, cache. These are a little more complicated, or a lot, depending on the difficulty level, They do list a set of coordinates, but these are not correct. Usually, COs (Cache Owners) with a sense of humor will even put that in the description that the coordinates will put you in the middle of a lake or a highway. With caches like these, there is a clue or puzzle to solve to find the real coordinates. Once you have solved the puzzle or clue, you will go to those coordinates, find the cache and sign the log. My caching buddy loves these types of caches. He likes nothing better than sitting down and solving a lot of puzzles at once. Then he’ll call and we’ll go on a caching run to get them all!

Another type of cache I have found is an earth cache. These are different from the normal types of caches, in that there are no physical logs to sign. The earth cache that I found involved going to the set of coordinates listed, then answering the questions listed there. Then you can log the find. It is important to remember that you have to send a message to the CO with the answers. If the CO does not receive the answers within a reasonable amount of time, they can and will delete the log, making it disappear from your finds. These usually involve something interesting in nature, like a specific rock formation or historic site that the CO feels is worth seeing. This isn’t the best picture, but this was the one we sent to the CO, not a requirement, but appreciated, along with our answers.

Multi-caches require you to go to at least two locations. The locations are close to each other, so don’t worry too much about travel time. The multi-caches I’ve done were actually walking distance between locations. These types of caches involve going to the first location and finding a clue. This particular cache’s clue was this awesome wind-chime, hanging in a graveyard. Yes, caches can be in graveyards. Don’t worry though, they are usually located on the outskirts or in the trees or shrubbery. This particular clue was a number that we had to add to the original coordinates. This led us to the actual cache, we signed the log and moved on to the next.

Event caches are another very unique type of cache. They are not a hidden cache at all. This is a geocacher event, this does include a log, but they tell you specifically where to go and at what time. The family and I had the opportunity to attend one of these earlier this month, and it was a lot of fun. These are hosted by a particular cacher, the log has to be signed while you are there, then you can log the “find”. It’s another smiley for your counts, but more importantly it’s a fun time to meet other cachers. You can discuss particular local hides, maybe talking to the people who placed them, or discuss the difficulties you have with certain caches. They also sometimes have different trackables for you to take and hide later on. I will talk about trackables later on, I promise.

I need to start this post by saying that this is an incomplete list. There are many different sites available that have glossaries of geo-slang, but as for myself, I felt the need to keep reading these ridiculous words and abbreviations, that made no sense, until I found out what they meant.

The first one that started driving me crazy was found while browsing through digital logs: TFTC. It was showing up multiple times, in multiple cache logs. This is a short way to log a find, and it stands for “thanks for the cache”, a close companion to this is TFTH, meaning “thanks for the hide”.

Second weird thing I found in logs was “out collecting smileys”. What the heck could that mean?! I was thinking maybe little smiley face erasers? Nope! I should have figured this one out much sooner, but I was a little slow on this.

When looking at the “live map”, an option on your apps main screen, the caches you have already found show up as smiley faces. It’s cute and quirky, but now you know!

SWAG is a common term in today’s culture. Some of the cache descriptions would have a line, such as “loaded with SWAG”. I figured out pretty quickly that SWAG meant that there were little trade items in the cache, my kids call it treasure. I was browsing through a geocaching website recently and discovered it stands for “Stuff We All Get”.

The most recent term to throw me came from a fellow geocacher. CO. Now, to me, an Army brat, that means Commanding Officer. Luckily, he was right there to ask, so this one was answered quickly. CO stands for Cache Owner. This is the person who placed the cache and is responsible for its upkeep.

This is in no way a comprehensive list of terms, only the ones that made me bonkers or struck me as weird. For the best list of these geo-words, be sure to check out the geocaching glossary. It will fill you in on all the important and not-so-important ones.